PwC's UK and US operations are to contribute to the wider international investigation over the tax scandal that has embroiled the consulting firm in Australia over the last two weeks. An independent assessment into PwC's international network will be launched via Linklaters as PwC Australia seeks to determine who exactly played a role in the distribution of confidential information. The initial document released by a Senate inquiry revealed that senior staff had marketed the confidential information regarding government plans in relation to tax avoidance for the benefit of PwC and its clients.
The CEO of one of the largest gaming companies in the world, Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney, has warned that the UK competition regulator risks betraying antitrust principles by allowing Google to continue charging high fees on its app store. Regulators worldwide are scrutinising Google and Apple’s app stores and fees on purchases, which have been described as akin to a tax. Last month, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said Google had offered to allow developers to use alternative payment systems on its Android Play Store. However, the company would still be able to collect fees of up to 27%, down from 30%. The regulator is currently consulting on the proposals. Mr Sweeney has long campaigned against the app stores and the fees charged by Google and Apple, and both companies’ practices have been criticised by regulators and EU lawmakers, who are expected to force them to allow alternative app stores on their devices.
What you need to know about Temu, the online shopping app dominating download charts
CBC
23-05-21 08:00
Experts have raised concerns about Temu, a discount e-commerce platform that has become hugely popular due to its referral scheme, gamification techniques, and aggressive social media marketing. The platform, which launched in the US in 2022, aims to be the “cheapest online supermarket in America,” according to a Super Bowl advertisement. Among the concerns raised about the Boston-based, Chinese-owned app is its “growth-at-all-costs” approach, its promotion of low-quality, disposable goods, and the environmental impact of its free shipping and returns policies. Experts also warn that using Temu encourages consumers to “buy stuff you don't need and inexpensive stuff that's likely to break.” There have also been accusations that the platform enables the sale of counterfeit goods and data leaks. However, the platform’s consumer-to-manufacturing model has been praised by some for potentially reducing waste.
The CEO of one of the largest gaming companies in the world, Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney, has warned that the UK competition regulator risks betraying antitrust principles by allowing Google to continue charging high fees on its app store. Regulators worldwide are scrutinising Google and Apple’s app stores and fees on purchases, which have been described as akin to a tax. Last month, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said Google had offered to allow developers to use alternative payment systems on its Android Play Store. However, the company would still be able to collect fees of up to 27%, down from 30%. The regulator is currently consulting on the proposals. Mr Sweeney has long campaigned against the app stores and the fees charged by Google and Apple, and both companies’ practices have been criticised by regulators and EU lawmakers, who are expected to force them to allow alternative app stores on their devices.
The Conservative Party has received its largest donation for more than 20 years from Egyptian-born billionaire Mohamed Mansour. The £5m gift reversed a drop in donations following Boris Johnson’s exit from the prime ministerial post and defections to Labour by previous conservative donors. Mansour highlighted his faith in Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s ability to foster economic growth as a key reason for his gift. Figures from the Electoral Commission released last December indicated that between July and September, Labour donations surpassed those to the Conservatives for the first time in over a year, £5.4m to £3m.
Academic and investment guru Eugene Fama has argued that market pricing is better at determining stock and bond prices than AI at present. Fama said that while machine learning and other kinds of AI have the potential to do some executions better, they cannot predict future outcomes like markets can. Citing efficient market hypothesis, which he describes as 50 years old and proven, he said AI has to catch up with real time judgement making and millions of actions to overtake market pricing. He also noted that stock markets had returned about 10% a year over nearly a century.
Investors appear unconcerned by the impact of the prospect of a US default on its debts within the next fortnight, despite US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warning of a "catastrophic" financial collapse unless Republicans and the ruling Democrats agree a deal on spending and the debt ceiling. However, it is suggested bond investors and traders are less sanguine than their equity counterparts, with warning signs being seen in yields on shorter-term debt bills. Analysts have noted the US stock market's growth has been largely driven by the "mega caps", the biggest technology stocks. The New York "FANG" index, which tracks Facebook's parent, Meta, Apple, Google's Alphabet and Amazon, has surged 52% YTD. Despite this, the cost of US credit default swaps has risen and investors have withdrawn over $24bn from equity funds so far in May.
Chinese police have advised citizens to look at their children's phones to see whether they have downloaded encrypted messaging programs such as Telegram, which officials say sits in a grey area of the law as it can delete content after it has been read, making it difficult to secure evidence for criminal investigations. Parents have been instructed to take their children to the local police station if they have the app so officers can determine if they have broken the law. Chinese authorities frequently pursue political troublemakers' family members as a means of pressuring them to cease activities judged to be against the state's interests. Telegram played a significant part in organising last year's white paper protests, a series of demonstrations held to express frustration at the country's strict coronavirus policies and hardline censorship of social media content.
Hiroshima's tragic legacy a reminder of potential dangers of today's no-limits technologies
CBC
23-05-22 12:45
Leaders of the G7 nations have urged the adoption of technical standards to maintain trust in artificial intelligence (AI). The development of generative AI, which can create realistic text, has been a source of concern for some who argue it could potentially create realistic-looking so-called "deepfake" videos or other forms of misinformation. Many tech entrepreneurs and AI researchers, including Elon Musk and Apple's head of machine learning, recently called for a pause in generative AI's development, citing potential risks. Politicians have also been increasingly concerned: the EU is on the verge of signing the world's most comprehensive law to regulate AI. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has appeared more relaxed, saying it remains to be seen whether AI poses a danger.
Uber's head of diversity, Bo Young Lee, has been placed on leave following a backlash about a company event titled “Don’t Call Me Karen”, which featured white Uber employees discussing their own experiences of race and gender. The term “Karen” refers to a middle-class white woman with a sense of entitlement. The event's goal was to “focus on the spectrum of the American white woman's experience”. Internal emails show that a black female employee complained that the events were “tone-deaf, offensive and triggering”. The incident highlights the issues companies face in relation to race and gender in today's political climate. Google employees staged a walkout in 2018 over the company’s treatment of women, while Facebook staff took part in a virtual protest in 2020 over posts on the platform from President Donald Trump that they argued were “advocating violence against black demonstrators”. Even avoiding a stance on the issues can prove problematic.
Google Doodle is honouring US activist Barbara May Cameron on what would have been her 69th birthday. The cartoon depicts Cameron, who died in 2002, with a camera around her neck and holding a pride flag, as she did when coming out in 1973. Behind Cameron stands a group of women showcasing fellow members of the LGBTQIA+ community. A member of the Hunkpapa, a Native American group, Cameron co-founded the Gay American Indians in 1975, the first group dedicated to an Indigenous LGBTQIA+ community. The Google Doodle was created by queer Mexican and Chitimachan artist Sienna Gonzales, with Cameron's partner Linda Boyd-Durkee as a collaborator.
New artificial intelligence (AI) tools that use generative AI to manipulate photos have overtaken traditional editing tools such as Adobe's PhotoShop, according to industry experts. Google and the Max Planck Institute of Informatics have developed DragGAN which allows users to radically alter photographs in various ways using a system that can hallucinate unseen details such as teeth inside a lion's mouth. Separately, Stability AI has released an upscaler that performs an almost identical function as part of its offering. Adobe is also working on generative AI tools for photographers.
Meta has been fined a record €1.2bn ($1.3bn) by the European Union, which says the social media firm must stop transferring users' data to the US by October. The decision updates a legal row that started in 2013 when Austrian lawyer and privacy campaigner Max Schrems complained about Facebook's handling of data following revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden about US electronic surveillance. Meta said it would appeal the punishment and apply for the decision to be put on hold by the courts. The EU's penalty is the largest since the bloc's tough privacy regime became law five years ago.
Social media app TikTok has launched a legal challenge against Montana's ban on its use, which it says is unconstitutional and violates freedom of speech. The company has already faced similar bans in two dozen US states and by the military. Republican lawmakers in Montana introduced the law to prevent the Chinese government gaining access to Montanans' personal information.TikTok has more than 150 million US users, with the Biden administration still considering whether to approve its business plans in the US.
The S&P 500 index has resisted breaking through the 4,200 point barrier despite flirting with the figure several times, a development which Stockton University's Nathaniel Warner linked to "the markets [being] a game of psychology" and "specific landmarks [being] self-fulfilling" in terms of traders anticipating failure at key levels. Wall Street strategists had been braced to predict a 5% decline by the end of the year after the past 12 months' roiling instability but were taken aback by the coterie of tech giants generating the lion's share of market growth, leaving smaller (usually more vulnerable) companies out in the cold. This situation is leading to qualms among asset allocators, who are remaining cautious even as many increasingly think that the tech stocks are no longer overpriced having enjoyed a several-month-long boom over the past year. Meanwhile, Credit Suisse's equity strategist, Patrick Palfrey, attributed their successful rally to fund managers reversing their decision to underweight the tech firms.
Economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson argue in their book "Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity" that powerful elites are using, and intend to further use, artificial intelligence (AI) to enrich themselves while controlling the populace. While former gains have usually generated benefits for wider society, AI is different as it is expected to enable its users to simultaneously manipulate people and take their jobs, the economists said. They suggest a raft of remedies, including taxation of internet giants, revocation of some patent laws and statutory interference, in an effort to counteract these trends.
Melanie Mitchell, a computer science professor at Portland State University, described the book as riveting and eye-opening. Co-author Johnson is a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and Acemoglu is the co-author, with James Robinson, of the book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty”. In their new book, the authors argue that digital revolution has been appropriated by a group of self-serving elites, creating an oligarchy of technology companies that use machines and algorithms to replace workers. They believe that “machine intelligence” can be shifted toward “machine usefulness” through public policy, which they hope will be influenced by public opinion and a revitalised democracy.
The book details how, throughout history, improvements to productivity have frequently led to the enrichment of powerful landowners or industrialists, while leaving ordinary people worse off. While change is often driven by challengers, they inevitably become co-opted by the status quo, the authors argue. Countervailing forces such as electoral competition, trade unions, politicians and reforming intellectuals can redirect technology towards creating shared gains, the book also states.
Stop Scams UK, a group of banks, tech firms and telecos, is to begin a pilot scheme using members' phone numbers and email addresses to track and disrupt scams. The initiative, which aims to use scheme members to gather intelligence on scammers and their methods, is intended to help disrupt the flow of criminal proceeds from "money mules" who let scammers transfer stolen cash through their accounts. Fraud cost UK consumers £1.2bn ($1.6bn) last year.
